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Mon 11 Apr, 2016 06:39 am
Is the need of salvation an evil lie from religions?
Some religions like Christianity and Islam teach that people are condemned by God and that we have to work to gain salvation. God created us ill, and orders us to be well, on pain of tremendous eternal torture and eventual death. This teaching follows the one where we are told that God is unknowable, unfathomable and works in mysterious ways. This makes the notions of condemnation and the need for salvation obvious lies.
Gnostic Christianity does not use this type of carrot and stick motivation in its theology. We are Universalists and only see a heaven, no hell. We think God too good a creator to ever have to condemn anyone. Our God is a winner, not the loser God that Christianity has invented. All the Gods are myths created to help us reach our highest human potential and are only tools to open our inner eye. Our single eye as Jesus calls it.
How we can forgive ourselves is that as Universalists, we have tied righteousness to equality. The logic trail from there says that if God is to punish anyone, he would have to punish everyone as everyone contributes to what we all are.
For instance. If God were to punish Hitler, he would have to revue what made Hitler what he ended up being. God would follow his time line and see perhaps that his parents spanked him and God would know what we know today, that spanking creates resentment and a delinquent attitude. That beginning would see Hitler's parents setting his mindset which eventually flowered into his tyrannical nature. So to be just, God would automatically have to punish Hitler's parents. That same logic would apply to everyone who contributed or facilitated Hitler's rise to infamy.
So for you and me to blame just ourselves for what we are would be quite unjust. This is not to say that we hold no responsibility for our actions, just not all of them.
Do you agree that the need of Salvation promoted by religions is an evil lie?
Regards
DL
@Greatest I am,
Quote:So for you and me to blame just ourselves for what we are would be quite unjust. This is not to say that we hold no responsibility for our actions, just not all of them.
Guess I'd need a guideline as to which we are and are not responsible for to answer your question.
@Leadfoot,
Leadfoot wrote:
Quote:So for you and me to blame just ourselves for what we are would be quite unjust. This is not to say that we hold no responsibility for our actions, just not all of them.
Guess I'd need a guideline as to which we are and are not responsible for to answer your question.
Anything short of Stockholm Syndrome means you take about 1/2.
But that is my standard and it is up for debate.
Regards
DL
@Greatest I am,
I was looking for something like a principle that defined the dividing line rather than a ratio, but OK, I'll play.
Anything you do that is not in accordance with your own internal beliefs (whatever they are), you are responsible for and deserve to blame yourself for.
@Leadfoot,
Leadfoot wrote:
I was looking for something like a principle that defined the dividing line rather than a ratio, but OK, I'll play.
Anything you do that is not in accordance with your own internal beliefs (whatever they are), you are responsible for and deserve to blame yourself for.
I can agree with that but wonder what anyone would do that is not in their own internal belief. Few of us force ourselves out of that.
What I was talking about more is a take off on the Stockholm syndrome type of indoctrination or brainwashing. If a victim of that grows to also beat his children then he is following his own internal belief but that belief was created wholly by the father who victimized him.
That father should be jailed just as much as the son he created to be a beater. The courts ignore the fathers in such cases as far as I know. A shame.
Regards
DL
@Greatest I am,
Quote:
I can agree with that but wonder what anyone would do that is not in their own internal belief. Few of us force ourselves out of that
I would not agree with that conclusion.
To use your example of the abusing parent who was him/herself abused, their abuse of their child is not out of belief that it is in the child's best interest but out of pent up anger and the desire to 'pay the world back' for their own suffering. They did not welcome their abuse then and would not choose it for themselves now. They are acting contrary to their belief and reality that they were wronged as a child.
To put the principle another way, you are responsible anytime you deny reality.
@Greatest I am,
No - "Evil" is a 'religious' label for 'cruelty'.
'Salvation' is guilt-resolved.
It's all wordplay (semantic/linguistic)
@Greatest I am,
Greatest I am wrote: . . . God created us ill . . .
This is your guess, right? For the scriptural narrative is that Adam and Eve were created perfect and lost their perfection through their act of free will.
@Greatest I am,
You do sound rather silly. You tell us on your own say-so that nobody needs salvation ! I say you would be ignored and laughed at in educated company.
And why did you use 'evil' did it slip out and reveal the real you. One would think 'False' is the only option. And finally please tell us why there are no good religions, all religions are bad, all equally bad. You see no one belongs to religionS they are like me, A Catholic or something.
I say it with seriousness, it is people like you that are making the world terrible.
Even if you believed what you say why not argue for Freedom of Conscience.
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